


World War Z: The Media

by Peapods



Category: Pundit RPF
Genre: M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-30
Updated: 2010-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What were the news people doing when the zombie apocalypse came?</p>
            </blockquote>





	World War Z: The Media

I. THE NEWS  


Snoqualmie, Washington, USA  
**[Before the war, Anderson Cooper was one of the most well known anchors and reporters in the world. He was one of the first to see the reality of _African rabies_ while on assignment in the Middle East and the first to start warning people that this wasn't just going to go away. Today, he _is_ the most well known newsperson. I met him in his home in Snoqualmie, Washington.]**

I remember being just about as frustrated as I had been back in New Orleans in 2005. The warning signs were all there, like buzzards circling a kill, and still no one would listen. Charlie, my producer, had been there in Israel-Palestine, he'd seen the dogs and what was happening. We up-linked our video to the satellite feed to New York, but then one of the higher ups kept it from going on television. Later that night I had a meeting with Warmbrunn.

**Jurgen Warmbrunn? Author of the Warmbrunn-Knight report?**

The very same. He was with Israeli Intelligence and told us he'd just sent off this report to our CIA. I asked him what was in it. He told me. All that evidence of what was going on and how to recognize it and even where it originated. I knew I needed to get it on the air. We shot as much as we could and caught the first plane back to New York. I should have known no one would listen. They let me do one story. Very brief, very few visuals. A "this is what's going on but don't worry it could never come here," kind of thing. Like it was just SARS or something. **[Shakes his head. He's obviously still angry. His hair is pure white now, no signs of any grey.]**

When people started using Phalanx, when it started happening in people's backyards, _then_ my superiors started to care. They let me do all the stories I wanted to. But it was too late. Cases started showing up in New York almost immediately. Hell, we were an international hub of business and travel. Who knows how many infected flew in here without our knowledge. One day I showed up for work and one of my camera guys was gone. I couldn't ask, but I could see the fear in everyone's eyes. It started spreading rapidly in New York.

**[A pause and another shake of the head.]** I say 'it' like it really was SARS or AIDs, but it wasn't. It was human beings. People I'd interviewed, people I'd said hi to in the subway. I did one more broadcast before the station called it quits. They left two guys and a camera. I wasn't one of the guys. I rushed home and packed like I used to. Like I was going to a foreign country where food, hygiene, and everything else came second, third, and dead last to just staying alive. Molly was anxious, but not scared. Thank God, Mom had died two years before. I had nothing but a few friends, my job, and my dog. I wasn't at Yonkers. I know someone who was. But no, I found another way out. Flights weren't stopped yet, most were headed north or out on boats like people in India tried. I went to Cuba.

Wasn't easy though. And thank God I had Molly with me. She would bark at every single infected person. I steered clear and I'm pretty fast, but one got on me. I was racing down the back stairs, one was coming up another three were coming down. Molly was going crazy and I thought I was going to swallow my heart. I was frozen for about five seconds before I kicked in the nearest window. Molly, God bless her, stayed right at the window where I told her to. The inhabitants were already gone. I knew I couldn't make it down the side steps and definitely not into the elevator. I knew I had to kill them. As soon as I was in the apartment I picked up the heaviest object that I could still swing with relative ease. The first thing I saw was this heavy looking brass lamp. It was still on. I yanked it out of it's socket, pulled off the shade and gave it a test swing. I poked my head out of the window. The ones at the top were still pretty far away, they weren't doing well with the stairs, or the concept of down. But the one at the bottom was just a level below me. I stepped back out and met it head on, swung the lap high over my head and down into the creature's skull. It fell immediately and we were off like a shot. Hopped in the first car, hot-wired it and gunned it through the city. That was the thing. You'd think there would have been tons of traffic, but so many people still thought they could just hole up. Taxis weren't running. Cops weren't going to be writing any traffic tickets, so I did about a hundred the whole way to the airport.

Maybe it was cowardly. I don't know. I know some people who died--were infected--in those first few weeks, learned about a few more a couple years ago after Victory in the U.S. was declared. I started thinking about what-if. These are supposed to be the sort of situations that show a person's quality. It was fight or flight, and most chose flight. Because this was bigger than anything. So.

Caught a small flight to Miami, which amazingly was not overrun, and then a took a little puddlejumper to Cuba.

They were mostly only accepting Cubans, ex-pats and their descendants. I had a friend there, a friend of my mother's, who ensured me a place to live. They took me because I had a vouch-person and, amazingly, because I had a dog. She'd had good training, wasn't violent, but definitely loyal. Of course, it didn't matter what breed of dog you had, they all reacted the same. I trained her to alert, but not attack or draw attention to herself. We had a place near water and twice a week I was a, well, guard I guess you could say. Molly and I patrolled up and down our designated coastline for about six hours at night. Night was when the dogs really came in handy, because we didn't suddenly get great vision when faced with an enemy that didn't need it at all.

We came upon several... jeez I never really know what to call them. Zombies, I guess. We never had a whole host or anything. That was usually closer to Havana and we were further down the coast. They also seemed to like Guantanamo, of course because of the detainee-work program setup.

**You had no such restrictions?**

No, I didn't. Can't say I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe that would be more humane. But I got there before the rush, I had a connection, and I had Molly. They seemed to know who I was too and for once that was okay with me.

I have a real problem with my fame and what it brings me, I tried to escape it for so long, tried to be normal. But the fact is, I never was very normal. **[A contemplative pause]**

In any case, the zombies didn't care if you were fucking Donald Trump. He was killed I hear, holed up in one of his towers, thought he had everything he needed. Except a hammer and nails to keep the door closed. Anyway, Molly and I, on the beach, we'd come across a zombie, shoot it, wait around for about five minutes to see if another showed up, then continue patrol. I'd shot plenty of guns before, but never with this kind of intent. It was... both strangely comforting and horrifying at the same time. Like I said, I had no real attachments anymore, so I started seeing acquaintances in these creatures' faces. One time I could have sworn I saw Larry King. But hell, he was almost decomposed anyway, so it would have been hard to tell the difference. **[He lets out a quiet snort. But the pain is evident in his eyes.]**

That was my time in Cuba. A breather, letting my heart calm down, inuring myself to the whole thing. Three years I did the same thing every day, until I couldn't anymore. I remembered all those people I'd seen in terrible situations and conditions and how they just kept fighting and knew I was done with being scared. At this point there was no such thing as coming late to the party. The party had hardly started and they needed anyone willing to step up. So, I packed up my same bag, grabbed my old handheld camcorder and Molly and found a way off the island. That was the hardest part. Finding my way around. Where before my passport and a wad of cash would have done it before, this required all sorts of paperwork and disclaimers and training. I asked them why they thought paperwork was important at this juncture. They just shrugged at me. Like the whole world could sink into the middle of the galaxy and someone would have to fill out paperwork for a change in address. But I finally got on another little puddlejumper like the one that had flown me there three years before. It would only fly to 'safe-zones.' You're wondering about fuel I can tell. A lot of folks had loaded up when they returned to Cuba. They had already built a nuclear reactor, so they had power, they had an electric train built, fuel was reserved for the few boats they let out and airplanes. I was lucky enough to be flying with the "UN" ambassador. So I was flown to California.

There were strict protocols for this landing. So much dog sniffing and we waited on that plane for probably a day before they let us off. They all knew who I was again. It was strange, being in Cuba, so many _hadn't_ known me because of their lack of access. I'd gotten used to being.... invisible. Here, I was something again, and they didn't want to let something go. Roy Elliot had already made his name with basic propaganda films. But propaganda has never been my goal, never been something I thought was very useful. So I started with facts. "Just the facts, ma'am" as Joe Friday might say. I'm usually more like you. Interested in everyone's story, wanting to tell the world about their suffering. But in this case, everyone was suffering. Everyone had a story and no one was going to feel sorry or help anyone else because everyone thought their story was worse. I dealt in facts, in making sure the government was doing everything it could to help people. And most of the time, I think they did.

I did a piece on the ferals. Went to the facilities where they kept all these kids who'd lost their parents and their friends and everyone else. They were found hiding under beds or in basements. And they always resisted help. Some did the whole "suicide by cop" thing. You know what I mean? They don't want to be a zombie, they've spent so much time trying to survive that they just can't kill themselves so they make it so the soldier who comes across them has to shoot them. Anyway, went to go see these kids. They weren't being treated badly or anything, but you could see how... desolate they were, more than any other survivor because they had no one but themselves, had been alone too long with very little in the way of hope. I managed to talk to one of the more coherent ones. She was going to be placed with a family soon. She couldn't have been seventeen, but she recognized me. She talked to me about how she used to watch the show and how much she had loved me and Erica bantering and whistling Andy Griffith. She told me later she was almost twenty six. I couldn't believe it. She was so small and so vulnerable. She told me her story. That's when I stopped doing "fact" pieces. And that was probably what almost led me over the edge.

**The edge?**

Nervous breakdown, or near one. I was getting emotionally invested in every single piece I did and my old habits had abandoned me. I couldn't just...absorb the pain anymore. Because my old pain was suddenly nothing in light of what was happening. I used to say that no tragedy was any less tragic because something worse was happening halfway around the world. I had to acknowledge that fact when traveling to wars and seeing the worst and best in human nature didn't make my own tragedies any easier to bear. But I found a way to bear them. Hurricane Katrina hit and every barrier just fell away. I wrote my book and suddenly I was feeling the world again, instead some weird... I wasn't seeing and experiencing the world through the lens of my father's and brother's deaths. Then this happened. No armor, nothing. In Cuba it was easy to push it aside, it wasn't there in full force like it was here in the States.

The first night I was out on the front line, it was horrible. I'd been training for months to go with them. The president, a really great man, was adamant that the press remain free, but he did insist that we take precautions, that we be restricted.

**We?**

**[He smiles a little and glances back at his home.]** There were only a handful of us, but we all had a partner. Working alone wasn't an option. My partner is still my partner, now in every sense of the word. He was... I think he kept me from complete meltdown after that experience at the front. It was... it was fall, I remember. Despite the fact that the world was still in the fallout from the nuclear blasts the trees were quite pretty. We'd been restricted behind the battle lines. They line up you know, pick them off one by one once the dogs go get 'em. I was laying on a hillside. My partner was... well he says he was taking a bathroom break, but I thought at the time he just didn't like being around me. We didn't seem to like each other much back then. Anyway, I was alone and bored. Zack had just started coming, all picked off in seconds, and then more came. I had seen them up close, you know, bludgeoned them. Had even seen big groups. But this... I'd never seen anything like this. Thousands of them from my vantage point. I was... you know I was terrified. And that's... unusual for me. In those kinds of situations I- I don't want to say I get off on the adrenaline, but I certainly use it to my advantage. But then, it just sat in my stomach like a lead weight and I couldn't move. I didn't see.

One came up from behind. They hadn't formed the Reinforced Square yet, you know where they just get in a square and fire at all sides? This was a big guy, almost bigger than my partner and definitely more muscle. Or, used to be. I guess they're all pretty strong by comparison. Anyway, he was crawling, had his kneecaps shot out, and grabbed a hold of my legs. I couldn't scream, couldn't cry out. I kicked at it, but it was so strong. I was crying, I think. My partner says I was crying anyway. He ran up and shot it in the head. He was on me in a second. Checking my legs, checking every part of me. When he saw I wasn't bitten just scared... I don't know if you can even imagine. You're straight, I presume?

**Yes.**

Well, I thought my partner was, but he gathered me up in his arms and just wouldn't let go. He has such big arms. I never really liked men his size, but I don't know... you don't give up that kind of safety easily. Safety later turned to love and now I can't imagine a day without him.**[A small smile.]**

Anyway, I stayed on the front. Some teams just went on home, not willing to deal with pissing their pants every once in a while. But we stayed and we became the best known reporters. After VA day, when we finally reached Hero City, we took the picture that's become so synonymous with the entire campaign. It was home for us and watching them watching the sunrise over Manhattan, our _home_... we couldn't _not_ take that picture. We have the original. It's in a small frame in the study.

This war... was unlike any war I ever went to or studied. Because it truly was a world war. Because it truly _was_ senseless death. You can think of it like the black plague or you can think of it like World War III. Neither is particularly accurate. Because even though humans perpetrated these.... acts... were they even human anymore? Or were they just the disease?

Anyway, VA day happened and we went home. We built this home, adopted some old K9s and one of the feral children who was more easily rehabilitated. She's doing pretty well now, with regular therapy and us around.

**[An older man with glasses comes out of the house and hands Cooper a glass of Coke. It is Keith Olbermann, former MSNBC reporter and Cooper's partner.]**

If you want a _real story_ you should talk to Keith. His is far more interesting.

*****  


Snoqualmie, Washington, USA  
**[Sitting with his partner, Anderson Cooper, at his side, Keith Olbermann is less imposing than his body size and his reputation as "angry man" would suggest. He has lost much of his lingering weight and his hair is completely grey. For seven years now he has been part of the best news team in the country. He is openly attentive to his partner and is somewhat reluctant to recount his tale in front of him.]**

It was so strange. We didn't see it. MSNBC was notoriously about politics and _not_ news. We weren't like CNN, sending anchors out into the dark places of the world. I remember thinking that Anderson had to be one the most foolish people on the planet for doing those stories. I thought he was no newsman, didn't deserve to be behind the desk. I was right about that, but it was more that he didn't deserve to be _forced_ behind the desk. He was a natural born reporter, but anchor he failed at sometimes. All this is getting at the fact that when Anderson Cooper is telling you that something is going on in the world that the government isn't telling you, you listen up. I was extremely _resentful_ of that fact, but even I couldn't deny the truth of it.

So that's how I first saw it. I was too concerned with the economy, with the president, the Congress as I've always been when sports isn't involved. I'm watching CNN and suddenly Anderson is talking about this outbreak of _African Rabies_. Christ, it sounded so implausible, I mean, _rabies_? The pictures he was showing. That wasn't rabies. On no planet where sane people live was that rabies.

**[He shakes his head. Cooper starts rubbing his back.]**

So, finally my superiors start talking about this, start getting on the phones with our NBC affiliates, anyone we have in the field. All the stories start flooding back as we start investigating. Phalanx was all over the place, a preventative measure, I even knew some people who took it. Reports were coming in that there were a lot of household disturbances, a lot of deaths, and a lot of not-deaths. People who would be dead in the street would get up. CNN did their piece about the report a few weeks before this all started happening. And then the first cases started showing up in New York. People I used to see in the halls everyday suddenly stopped showing up for work. The NYPD, the fire department, the hospitals were all overrun and there was this just.... I can't call it panic, but anxiety is too mild. An undercurrent of fear and disquiet as relatives start disappearing--and then reappearing.

I wasn't smart. I stayed on air, with Rachel Maddow, until there was no one left but a skeleton crew. We were reporting on this thing and no one was coming out and saying what it was. I finally dropped the Z-word on the last broadcast I did for MSNBC. "For this, my last Special Comment, I forgo all circumlocution. Our families and neighbors, our enemies and friends, north and south, east and west, the faithful and the profane are all affected by this menace. And this menace can be called nothing other than 'zombie.'"

**[This is an exact quote from the last Special Comment.]**

And then I got Rachel and I got the hell out of there. We had packed and put everything in our offices. A duffel each, packed with a few changes of clothes, a few personal items. She'd already lost Susan. Had only showed up for work that day because we planned to leave together. We'd gotten a car, filled to the brim with everything we'd need to keep going including a couple cans of gasoline when the stations ran out. We were part of steady stream that got out of Manhatten before the shit really hit the fan. So many cars abandoned on the freeways to the north, people walking and running. Some of them, you could tell, weren't uh-**[Clears his throat]** were no longer alive. A slight pallor to the skin that indicated they were not long for this world. The actual ones had their arms up, like every fucking horror movie has ever depicted. And we had to speed by. You couldn't stop, couldn't take that chance and that was the worst feeling in the world. The human race as "Worst Person is the World"

**[He says this with none of the drama of his show.]**

Finally, we're rolling through Yonkers, and the soldiers are waving people through, they've got so many dogs and even though neither Rachel nor I were any kind of threat it was still intimidating. The military had only begun bouncing back from that travesty of the former administration. We recognized some of our own out there. Taking interviews, doing broadcasts no one who was actually dealing with all this would see. The press to soldier ratio at Yonkers was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. I half believed Anderson was there, but these guys. These weren't people who had been in battle before, you could tell. They were small time reporters looking to make it big. From all the major news outlets, even ours and CNN, all hoping for some kind of Hail Mary pass.

Anyway, we got through, we continued west until we hit the Canadian border around Niagara Falls. We decided to get back behind the Rockies while staying as north as we could. Zombies don't move as well in the cold. Not meaning they're in any way as affected by it as humans, but they slow up a little. Buffalo, we knew, was a mess. We took the scenic route that ran along Lake Ontario. Which was surprisingly bare. We traveled in a caravan with about twenty others, but one else joined us, we didn't really see anyone else. Only when we joined up with the main highway did things get bad. So many abandoned vehicles. Not too many zombies, but what did that matter when people were getting robbed at gunpoint just for a can of food?

There was no gas stations with gas, obviously, and we took care to hide our gasoline. I've always thought of myself as a Christian, but I had to beg forgiveness every time I sped by someone on the side of the road. Some people just gave up. Just sat on curbs and waited for their fate to arrive. That kind of desolation was worse than the terror that accompanied the zombies.

We only had one really terrifying encounter. Not our only encounter, but the only one that wasn't just a quick 'shoot and run'. We didn't have any guns at this point. Neither of us was particularly versed in how to go about _getting_ one much less _firing one_. So we stopped in this town. Nowhere of consequence, I think they're _might_ have been one stoplight. There was no one left in the town and there was some gas left, so we tanked up. We needed food though so we were walking down the street, we couldn't see anyone, and we see a Wal-Mart just a block or two down. So we head towards it. Then we heard the moans and the zombies just came pouring out of every door surrounding us. We froze, God I'm amazed we weren't zombie food weeks before.

Then Rachel is fucking pushing me and we're both running for Wal-Mart. It was horrific that our salvation would be fucking Wal-Mart. Apparently, it was running on its own generator because the doors opened. We were, thankfully, faster than the zombies, which while not saying much was pretty good for someone who had just turned 52. We flipped the locks--I don't know, can zombies figure that kind of shit out? And we just like, exchanged this look. And we were booking it for the hunting section.

Do you know they have manuals? "Place bullets here," and "Make sure the safety is on." We picked up the manuals and about ten guns each--packed into some duffel bags--and went out the back. There were a few zombies there. We had loaded the guns. We shot them for the first time. It's such a strange feeling, to kill something that used to be human. One got a hold of Rachel and I just saw red. I think pulled it off her. Rachel says I pulled its head clear off. I don't remember it. I just remember thinking I wasn't going to let anything happen to her while I could. There were only a few more after that. We dispatched them easily and ran for the car. The noise had drawn the others and we could hear zombies behind us. Again, thank God they can't run even if they are strong as fuck. We got to the car--didn't bother to lock it obviously-- and jumped in. We hit the gas and didn't look back. Couldn't look back.

Abandoning the car was the worst thing. It was unavoidable, but we'd only made it to the base of the Rockies on the Canadian side. We went on empty right outside a small town. We went in and were able to get some replacement supplies. Saw a few zombies, but they didn't see us. We headed into the hills with only a compass as our guide. We had no idea if we'd make it. We had no idea what to expect in the mountains. We thought it was our best bet though--after all, how many people had lived in those mountains before? They weren't exactly hospitable.

Rachel, despite how butch she thinks she is, complained like no other during those first few days and I can say that since she's not here at the moment to defend herself. **[Both Olbermann and Cooper giggle a little.]** "Keith, my shoes are too tight. Keith, could we please find a trail. Keith, if I don't wash off soon I'll start attracting a whole lot more than the flies." Of course, I recognized it as the only way she could stay sane in this situation. In the car it had been easy to think we were just on some kind of demented road trip. But now we were hoofing it over the Rocky Mountains, carrying an arsenal that would have made Dick Cheney envious, and trying not to think about everything we'd lost and just _getting away_.

It was boring, mostly. Every time we thought we saw civilization we headed away from it until we needed something. And then we tried to be as stealthy as possible. I think we only ran into a few zombies those first few weeks. Easy head shots and then us cutting and running as far and as fast as we could.

There was one night. **[He laughs]**. Christ, I laugh now, but that night we almost pissed ourselves with terror.

We were laying side by side, curled around each other it was so fucking cold. Usually we tried to go up trees. We'd straddle a branch and lean onto the trunk. But jeez, that was the most fucking uncomfortable way to sleep ever. But we were in this part of the mountains that only had these tall pines with no low branches to speak of. So, we found this fallen tree and fell asleep in the furrow it made in the ground. Bugs were nothing compared to zombies any more. Though Rachel complained enough.

We're asleep and suddenly something is right beside me. Rachel was covered on both sides by me and the tree. I froze, I couldn't even move. I was convinced there were zombies surrounding us. I held onto Rachel tighter, who of course woke up, and just prayed. She asked me what was wrong. I told her, "I think they've found us." I could feel her tense up and her breath was hitching. But then, nothing was happening. We couldn't hear them, we couldn't smell them. I gently turned over, thinking I was going to see blood dripping off the jaws of some unholy thing.

**[He shakes his head and lets out a shaky laugh]**

A bear. Nosing our packs before moving on. Rachel had turned over too and was staring with her mouth open. Then, with a straight face, no hint of fear or humor she said "I think I understand why bears were so high up on Stephen Colbert's shit list, now." And we both just lost it. I don't think we had laughed that hard since the whole thing had started. Didn't even care that a racket like that _would_ attract them.

A week later we came over a rise and there were soldiers with their guns right in our faces. God, we were so happy to see them we didn't even care. I think Rachel might have even kissed one of them. And a man at that! Their dogs didn't do anything but nudge us, so they let us pass. Gave us shelter, food. A few recognized us and got us transferred to San Francisco. And that was just... it wasn't a vacation, but it was a chance for us to get our heads on straight. We didn't know anyone, we didn't know if any of our friends were alive. That information just wasn't there. We put it out of our minds. We shared a house with a family that had managed to stay together. They were really excellent people. Had their head screwed on, were devoted to helping other people. One day I'd sit in a room by myself and just read everything in sight until the sun went down. Other days I'd go out and get a pickup baseball game together. Patrol at night for zombies still around in some of the houses and sometimes go to do actual constructive work. People just forgot about all the things that kept us apart before. Because it felt like a last bastion. Like we might be the only ones left in the world even if common sense said that was unlikely.

**Did you know when Anderson arrived?**

I knew when he'd arrived. I watched a few of his news reels, could see him about to come apart at the seams. **[Olbermann's hand now rests on Cooper's back]**. I can remember wanting to go to him. Wanting to see him with my own eyes. I didn't think I'd be welcome. Anderson telegraphs all his thoughts right on his face or in the movement of his hands. You could see between one story and another the difference. How he'd tried so hard to be unattached and it just made him crazy. But I didn't see him personally until the army recruited us to report from the front.

We weren't the only pair on the very front. Michael Ware was there too. Man was scarily accurate with a gun. Rachel was never really a reporter, though she loved military history and foreign policy. She had found other work that she found far more.... not satisfying, but something that she could do to make her feel useful. There wasn't a lot of call for me either, but they said I had journalism experience, and the sportscaster experience would help when trying to report this stuff. Anderson was born for this job. He shines in the field. So it was us on the front. John King and Candy Crowley were in the south. A few local reporters had been assigned to follow up our stories as we moved with the troops.

Anderson and I grew very close in that time. I could see that he was hesitant, that he was locked up emotionally. I'll admit I'm not the best at personal interaction. Maybe I was too cold, too impersonal, but all the while I was getting to know this extraordinary person. He did straight reporting, but he had this edge to it that really just got things across to the audience. I was learning his likes and dislikes all from hastily hidden smiles or grimaces. **[Keith laughs]** And oh boy, was he a smart-ass. Always had a remark ready, made the soldiers--the real ones--laugh and love him. They liked me fine, I guess, but I seemed to get more of a reaction from the former civilians. Maybe because I never really looked out for the common soldier like Anderson did. I was binding myself to him without even knowing it was happening.

**What do you remember about the incident with the zombie grabbing Anderson's leg?**

Not much actually. I had gone off to pee. We had some time before we'd need to move. I wasn't too far, but I heard the moaning, closer than it should have been to our side of the action. I whirled around and all I could see was Anderson. More specifically his eyes. Wide and blue and God, he was crying. Silent tears just rolling down his face, mouth all screwed up like he wanted to yell but couldn't. I shot the fucker, several times I think. I had to check him, I had to check because the thing had been so close and Anderson was practically hyperventilating. But I checked, there was nothing. I couldn't have hoped to stop myself from holding him. I knew then, even if he didn't, I wasn't going to let him out of my sight ever again.

That morning after we'd reached New Jersey New Jersey we woke up just like any other morning. We woke before dawn and they were just standing there. The soldiers. Watching the sun rise over our hometown. We could see our buildings, the places we grew up. They didn't cheer, didn't clap. Hell, didn't even cry. We snapped that shot and then we went to join them. We were home.

Except, it wasn't home anymore, couldn't hope to be after. We'd been... hoping for change, craving it for so many years before this happened. The president tried in his first few years, but we were waiting for something more. The world did change, a change not of our own making for once, or so they say. I realized, staring out at New York City, now Hero City, that the world would never be the same. I hadn't thought to witness something so earth changing and having done so I knew _I_ couldn't simply pick up my life where I left off years before.

We went back to San Francisco, retired, moved here. And frankly, **[He smiles at his partner, who returns it.]** I've never been happier.


End file.
